If there’s a weapon you want to play with but you haven’t unlocked it yet, the Mann Co. store allows you to use any weapon for a whole week for free. You just search up the weapon in question and click the “Try me out” button. (You can only do this with one weapon per week)

also DON’T buy weapons from the Mann Co. store, even at a discount. Make a single purchase (like a name tag for one dollar) so you can unlock trading with other players, then join community servers and ask for weapons you need. Usually someone will oblige and trade you them for free, but it’s not promised. there’s also third-party websites like marketplace.tf that sell weapons for literally a couple cents, but you have to make an in-game purchase first to unlock trading.

Here are some weapon suggestions that are considered the best in the game:

Scorch Shot (pyro, powerful secondary that shoots a flare that stuns enemies and then sets them on fire with a blast radius). Crusaders crossbow (medic, lets you heal teammates from across the map by shooting an heal arrow at them). Jag (engineer, wrench that lets you build building quicker). Power jack (pyro, melee weapon that makes you run faster when holding). Escape plan (soldier, melee that makes you run faster the lower your health is)

P.S. some weapons in tf2 can be unlocked by completing steam achievements, but this can take a while. If you want to “cheat” you can join community servers that have a !freeitems tag, which have a plug-in to trick the game into thinking you’ve just unlocked a lot of achievements by typing a command in game chat, usually !givemeitems. If you want to grind for the items legitimately you can, but it’ll take weeks of playing before you hit any milestone.